In South Lane, on the way to Plaque 2, you pass The Court House is known in some records as The Borough Manor. In 1679 Gyles Eyre was granted permission to open a Grammar Free School here for 12 boys. He was also given permission to hold two fairs in The Borough, one on the 12th of April and the other on the feast of St. Matthew. All profits from the fairs were to go to the school. The school finally closed after the new Board School opened in The Borough (Heritage Trail Plaque 3).
The Court House was also where the Parliamentary candidates were chosen and where the Mayor, the ‘Alderman of The Court Leet of The Borough” was elected annually. By 1835 this high sounding position in fact held limited privileges - the only known duty attached to the office by then was to ‘attend to and regulate the weights and measures within The Borough’.
In 1714 the MPs had provided the Mayor with a silver mace made by Gabriel Sleath of London, bearing the coats of arms of the Eyres and Duncombe families, who had represented The Borough in Parliament from 1707 till 1714. However at the abolition of The Borough the then Mayor, Mr Hobbs, refused to hand over the mace and left the village for Shirley, where he lived in a house he had named Mace Cottage. Later the mace was discovered in a Southampton pawn shop. Hearing of this, Lord Radnor purchased it for the village and presented it at a ceremony in December 1921. It remained in the Memorial Hall until 1970 when it was removed to Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum.
Plaque 2 is at the entrance to the Downton Baptist Church which was opened for worship on New Year’s Day 1794. It was built by members of the Baptist congregation following a conflict over the Aryan heresy, when those who were opposed first worshipped in a cottage in South Lane. The original Baptist Chapel, built in 1716 before the split of the chapel members, was in Gravel Close and is now used as the Downton Band Hall (Heritage Trail Plaque 6). Tradition has it that during the Protectorate of 1653 to 1658 the Baptists of Downton often worshipped on Wick Downs.
South Lane itself was once an old drove road to Charford. It now ends in a footpath leading on to fields to the south of the village. To continue the trail, retrace your steps back to The Borough.
